Howdy all!
Well, the night started with 2 questions. One was answered immediately, and one was answered at about lap 3 of the LM feature.
Question one was "What if we gave a Late Model race, and everyone came?" 29 cars, baby. Yeah. Batten down the hatches...its gonna be like the old days!
Of course, question two was along the lines of, "will those big black clouds skirt around us and go somewhere else besides here?" That answer was , unfortunately, no.
It looked off the start like we may be able to get it all in. At 7 the sky was a bit overcast, but not too bad. It soon became steadily darker throughout the program.
One thing that didn't get rained out was the
Jesse's Journey walk, which curcuited the speedway once at 7pm to raise money to help battle Duchenne muscular dystrophy. John Davidson was there. Participation was light, but so was the crowd on hand. 50/50 tix were sold and I'm sure a few bucks were raised for a good cause.
After a very brief pause and a quick go-through of the parade lap and anthems, it was time to go racing. Sort of...
...if you call time trialing racing.
Time Trials29 cars attempted to qualify. (and no thats not a typo) I don't think any records were broken, and by a quick look over the lap times, I'd estimate the bulk of the field coming in around the 19.3 or 4 mark.
Your contestants for the evening: 38-Hooker, 15-Matthews, 52-Sheridan, 91-MacGillvary, 55-Rankin, 89-Drew Spicer, 14-Emery, 02-Watson, 29-Barlass, 72-Thompson, 41-Adams, 82-Jay Shaw, 7-Vanderwyst, 22-Ramsay, 49-Clarke, 28-S Robblee, 2-Stewart, 32-M Robblee, 4-Jon Urlin, 77-Verhoeven, 10-Kennedy, 69-Rawlings, 20-Lindsay, 27-Box, 18-Weirsma, 3-Rijnen, and 8-Jacobs. The Elliotts (cars 9 and 37) were also there, but for the life of me I forget who was driving what. Gary was in one of them, and I don't know who was in the other. The 37 is normally David Elliott, but David wasn't there tonight. (If anyone could clear that up, that would be awesome.) The 37 car seemed to be having some trouble and did not qualify thru time trail, instead starting dead last in the feature.
Nothing really too out of the ordinary as far as time trials. The usual suspects were up near the top of the pile for fast times. One nice surprise was Mark Watson, a rookie to the LM division was making some pretty good lap times and cracked the top 5. Nice work!
Fast 5 in time trials:
28-Robblee at 19.037
52-Sheridan at 19.049
02-Watson at 19.054
10-Kennedy 19.089
7-Vanderwyst at 19.160
With a sky looking more ominous than it had when time trials started, it was on to the truck heats.
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DEMAR AGGREGATES TRUCKSHeat 1 saw a pretty good 3 way battle for the lead. 33-McDonald jumps to an early lead, but is soon passed by 00-Johns and 56-Showler. The top 3 quickly distance themselves with the rest of the field. Showler goes to work on Johns, giving him the rub and trying everything to get by, but in the end its Johns, Showler and McDonald in that order.
Heat 2 had the 11 truck, who sports 3 different names on the roster, with an early lead, but is passed on the 2nd circuit by both 01-Bloemendal and 82-Demelo. The real race is for 4th between 77-Zagarodny and 88-Fothergill (in the lookalike truck to Sid's 33) Fothergill prevails after the battle, but cannot make it up front to win the war.��� Finishing order is Bloemendal, Demelo, and Fothergill.
Now the sky's looking even darker, thunderheads looming on the horizon, but teasingly, they look like theyre heading to the north, and that they might just go by us. And now its time for the modifieds.
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POWERADE MODIFIEDSHeat 1 Starting order was 3-Cox, 39-McCullough, 38-Hendricks and 59-Finlay.
Finishing order was 3-Cox, 39-McCullough, 38-Hendricks and 59-Finlay.
Only difference was at the end of the race, the first two were half a lap ahead of the second 2.
Heat 2 saw 54-Limon take an early lead, followed closely by 1-Newman, and 88-Shipway. Newman tries everything, staying right with Limon. Shipway drops slightly back. Final order is Limon, Newman and Shipway.
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J.B.M. Autoleasing Triple Crown 50 LapperNow the thunderheads are right over the speedway, turning the sky a lovely shade of purple, with the odd lightning flash coming from the other side of the river. The decision was made to have the LMs go first, and you can bet the track has never gotten a big late model race under way so quickly.
They rolled the dice for the inversion and came up with a 6, so the pole went to 49-Clarke, then 7-Vanderwyst, Kennedy, Watson, Sheridan, and Robblee. 29 cars started, and despite the obvious concern for the weather, the crowd was pumped. We haven't seen this many cars for a regular Friday night LM race since the 80's, and it was apparent that a good portion of the field was actually competitive...that it wasn't just going to be 2 or 3 guys running away with it.
That was the good news.
The bad news is, unfortunately, that we got 3 laps in before the skies opened. Clarke had jumped out in front right off, with Vanderwyst and Kennedy hot behind him. The lead pack was beginning to form in the order of Clarke, Vanderwyst, Kennedy, Sheridan, Robblee and Watson all falling into line. Then on the third curcuit, something happened in turn 3. Vanderwyst went around and collected 22-Ramsay. No real damage. Someone said Kennedy tagged him but I didn't see. So Vanderwyst and Ramsay go to the back, and now we're getting a little excited because an angry Vanderwyst coming from the back can be...well...pretty exciting. But it wasn't to be.
On the restart, 82-Shaw (who'd had truly crappy luck all night anyway) and 27-Box got together in turn 3 to bring the yellow out again.
Then there was a weird moment where the skies opened over us with really huge raindrops - but only for a split second. (as if God nailed us with a single blast from some heavenly squirt gun.) Then we look over at turn 2. That corner, and ONLY that corner, are drenched. We watch this wall of rain staying just over turn 2, then it begins to move toward the grandstand. Then down it comes, full bore, and everyone scatters like rats.
Fully soaked by the time we make it back to the truck we climb in and listen, switching back and forth between the Nationwide race and Delaware's feed. And as if we weren't wet and miserable enough, we had to listen to Kyle Busch winning the Nationwide race too.
So after a half hour holed up in the truck, the rain's starting to dissapate a little, its only 930, so could we still get the race in? This intrepid reporter headed back to the pits just in time to hear the drivers meeting called so they could tell us the rainout procedure.
That was it. Game over.
But hey, there's not much else you can do when you've been deluged the way we were tonight.
The good news? Next week, its double Late Model Features.
The first order of business will be to get the remaining 47 laps in from this race done, then continue with the regular show, with Super Stock, Modified, and LM full Fri nite programs.
As far as the qualified Truck and Mod features from this week, they'll get made up at a later date.
See y'all next week!
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